We harvested potatoes today, and I posted some pics and commentary on the blog! In a word, they were awesome! emgardener, Our porch faces west, so the the plants get direct sun from about 11am until 7 or 8pm. I have heard that the morning sun is the "good sun" but unfortunately the house blocks most of the morning sun. The average temperature is a bit tricky to say. The porches in the city here are almost all built on top of lower sunrooms, and the floor of the porches is tarred to keep the lower roof from leaking. This makes the floor quite hot, but luckily we have a rug that mitigates this somewhat. If you were to stand on the porch barefoot in the summer without the rug it would burn your feet. It is also quite windy most of the time, which helps with the heat a bit. I would say the average temperature is somewhere around 80-85 degrees on most summer days. If it's 75 outside, it's probably a touch over 80 on the porch if it's sunny. My plants haven't wilted much in the heat. I think that using somewhat larger containers has helped with this. Most of my veggies are in at least 7 gallon pots, and the tomatoes are mostly in 11.4 gallon pots. I water about every other day when it doesn't rain, and it seems to work out well so far. The soil mix I'm using is the Sta Green potting mix sold at Lowes. I chose it largely because it was so lightweight compared to some others (since we are on an upstairs porch). I bought some moisture control and some normal. The moisture control stays damp very well, but I unfortunately planted the okra of all things in that pot (and it liked to be a little dry). I think that's why it has taken so long to really get going. Mike, Thanks for the heads up on the broccolini. We love broccoli but it's just not worth the space it takes on the porch. We had thought about broccolini, but I was a little hesitant because I wasn't sure what the yield would be. It sounds like a good thing to try. Here is a link that might be useful: The Potato Harvest! (on the blog)

weedyacres: Download the Grace Vycor Plus flashing installation instructions and see if they match your installation. I cannot overemphasize how important this is. Poor flashing doesn't usually show symptoms until long after the installer's final check has cleared. I just got an email from a woman who has two separate ant-infested door jambs. I diagnosed poor flashing instantly from an emailed picture. When I told her I wouldn't come out to bid until she assured me she was comfortable with a two to four thousand dollar budget, she told me it was a problem with the window in the door and that she was contacting her builder. I told her she was getting bad information and that unless it was under warranty, the only person her builder may return a phone call to was her lawyer. She is in complete denial; I see this constantly. She's ripe for a Craigslister with a can of Bondo.

rockybird, I hope everything will get resolved to your liking. As you know, I have been working on renovating my house. This being our first house and first reno, we have seemingly run into every possible obstacle. We just suffered a four month delay because the architect did not measure the existing house correctly. The approved plans for the existing part of the house have dimensions that are off by as much as 10". It wasn't just a few dimensions. There were mistakes every where. To make it worse, the incorrect dimensions were all larger than what they should be. This messed up all the windows and doors placements and the interior layouts. The GC told me he has to build what the plans said even though they are not correct, so I told him to stop working. Of course, the GC is not totally blameless. His sub poured the foundation for the addition one foot wider than what the plans specified. I went to my architect and went over all the problems and he said he would fix them, but he is super busy and I had already paid him in full since the plans were approved. It took over three months to get everything updated correctly. Once I had the updated plans, the GC is swamped and I had to wait a month for his guys to restart work at my house. Even now, things are still not in full swing as we are waiting for building materials. This has been such a crazy process! I am not sure I will ever want to tackle another renovation in the future if I can get this one done.

@3onthetree Thank you! That is very interesting and I think incorporates some ideas I ran through before I decided on the drawing I did. I do have some questions though: for drawing A - I'm assuming the red is your addition, with the dining room being off of my current kitchen and I'm also assuming you're putting the master suite above that correct? How would you adjust the stairs so you could get to the bedroom? I apologize if my drawing isn't the greatest to show where things are. I also have considered a detached garage but it would mean adjusting the location of my driveway, I was hoping to keep the garage attached because Michigan winters are not fabulous. For drawing B - I'm not sure what you had here, I'm assuming the red is a garage addition? Is it similar to what I had, with a master suite above it? I'm not sure how my stairs that are on the other side of the house would access it. I really appreciate your time though! I'm not an architect so, sorry if my questions are obvious.